The one setback I faced in packing up quickly was that the dry bag I had been putting the tent in was nowhere to be found. Unfortunately it seems as though it blew away in the night into the canyon below...or a mountain lion ate it, but most likely it blew away.
So to adjust I simply moved things around and made room in one of my rear panniers for the tent and just like that problem solved. I'm clutch in high pressure situations so just call me McGuyver.
And thus began our day which started out on a hill of substantial grade. Climbing was the theme of the morning up pass after pass, all on only the fuel of a Cliff Builder bar.
After about 20 miles of riding I was starting to worry that I might implode from a bad case of being a fat kid with food withdrawal but then we finally hit the town of Wall. Remember my previous post about tourist traps and clever brainwash marketing? Well the town of Wall is second to none. They have billboards for Wall Drug for hundreds of miles. I have only seen the Big Texan in Amarillo attempt to beat their efforts but its no contest really. They advertise free ice water and 5 cent coffee every 200 feet or so. I was sold on that alone but when we found out they had a breakfast buffet for $10 I was in love with the place.
As an aside, this trip has had a strange way of throwing off my taste in food. When you ride as much as we do you are so hungry that a meal that would normally be a 4 is upgraded to at least an 8 just like that. Wall Drug's buffet was probably a 5 but it tasted like a 9 to me.
While we were eating we ran into Nick and Jessa again who had stayed in town last night. It has been nice having a familiarity with them over the past couple days but sadly this was the last time we would see them as they would bypass Custer.
After our meal I was sitting outside by my bicycle and a group of people who seemed to be in their retirement years. They started asking me about the trip and somehow we got onto the topic of what cause I was riding for. This is a fairly popular question we get asked and its nice to get to discuss what Lighthouse, Inc. does and what the current situation in Cleveland's project communities is.
As it turns out one of the men actually sent his two daughters to Olivet and they had just graduated so he said with all the extra cash he was able to take this trip out west. After politely telling him I was happily in a relationship and could not be set up with his daughter but that Jared could, he asked if he could pray for me. The group huddled around me and lay hands on me while they prayed. It was a surreal feeling to be prayed over in this way by total strangers (although they are my new friends) in a tourist trap like Wall. I was very blessed by this gesture of love by these people who I suspect were thinking of me as if I were their child. They took some photos with me and the bike and one of the sign I have attached to the rear rack with this blog address. I hope they happen upon this post even though it was over a week ago when this happened. I would like to thank you all if you are reading this.
After we departed from Wall we encountered much of what we had become used to, rolling hills with not much to look at except grass. Then we started to see men in tractors harvesting hay on the side of the road. At first I thought it was cool that they were making good use of the median on I-90 but it didn't take me long to figure out that I just might have a hay allergy. It shouldn't have surprised me because in August when I would go to school in Oklahoma I would get a shortness of breath and a weezing cough.
Unfortunately this cough and shortness of breath has yet to escape me even a week or so later in Wyoming. I now continue coughing out of habit and due to the dry climate we are in, but on this particular day in South Dakota I struggled heavily until we finally reached Rapid City, an oasis of sorts with a big city look and small town feel.
When we arrived we went to a truck stop to get a drink but we were stopped outside by a crazy old man who rambled on and on about all sorts of things for 30 minutes. I wish I could tell you his story but to be honest it bounced all over and I find myself in a rare loss for understanding of what exactly he was saying. After escaping we went inside only to realize we were too cheap to buy a drink there so we chose to relocate to fast food destinations. I went to McDonalds while Jared went to Arby's (because he's made of money apparently).
In McDonalds I was able to make some calls on wifi while waiting to hear back from our warmshowers host, Fred. We were hit with a steady downpour for awhile but waited it out inside for a change.
Then we climbed. And climbed some more. Then we headed down into a valley, giving up all the ground we had worked for just like that. Finally we reached the seemingly obligatory hill that all riders who host warmshowers seem to live on. Fred's house was on a hill that almost reached Richland Center status but thankfully one of his neighbors decided to converse with me from her car window as I rode up. She was saying how impressed she was and that she was a rider too and that the hill never gets easier. I was out of breath and didn't chat very much with her.
Fred wasn't home yet because he's an architect who was doing an open house for a building he restored in Pierre so he told me to let myself in the back door. That is where we were greeted by the most hateful cat I've ever met. She would hiss and growl at us from the time we arrived to the time we left but I think she secretly loves me.
Fred's house is simply incredible of course because he designed it but I can't describe it well enough so I won't try. You just would have had to been there. After meeting our hosts and showering we passed out quickly.
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